


prayers to broken stone

by chameleonchanging



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23753947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chameleonchanging/pseuds/chameleonchanging
Summary: Order 66, from two perspectives: Plo, as he’s going to sleep; and Wolffe, as he’s waking up.
Relationships: Plo Koon/CC-3636 | Wolffe
Comments: 12
Kudos: 78





	prayers to broken stone

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [long i stood and looked down one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16470830) by [chameleonchanging](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chameleonchanging/pseuds/chameleonchanging). 



1\. 

Wolffe is angry with him for being reckless. This is not a new feeling. They’ve had this argument many times before. Plo has always been direct and decisive, and this late in his life not even love is enough to curb his nature. The unsettling tension in the Force is new, however, and Plo can’t help but be set on edge. **  
**

The Force is most strained around Wolffe, which is another layer of strangeness. Perhaps a warning that something terrible is to befall him, or that he is to make a momentous decision. Plo can only be vigilant as the future plays out. These days, many of the Force’s warnings are unclear.

From his perch atop the comms tower, he watches the men about camp, moving between stations, carrying crates. Nothing seems amiss. Still the Force is wary. It draws tighter and tighter, sending chills up Plo’s back, and then - it snaps. Danger. 

Across the camp, Wolffe receives a comm. He tilts his head, stills. His focus sharpens the way it does when he has an objective to complete. He nods, ends the call. Looks up and meets Plo’s eye. Activates their private channel. “Come here,” he says, voice flat. 

“Yes, Marshal,” Plo answers. He hops over the railing and drops the thirty feet to the ground, going into a forward roll before standing. Whatever it is must be urgent. He jogs over to the command station where Wolffe is waiting for him. 

“You swore to protect and defend the Republic,” Wolffe says, hands clenched.

“I did,” Plo answers, confused. The Force screams. Something flashes in Wolffe’s hand as he closes the distance between them, and then pain bursts in Plo’s belly. A knife, angled up under his ribs, sunk in to the guard. He gasps, one hand going to Wolffe’s hand around the hilt, falling into Wolffe, his knees collapsing. Blood soaks into his robes. 

Wolffe’s free hand curls around the back of his skull, his nails digging into his skin. “Marshal - Why - What did I - ?” Plo whispers. He tries to lean up, tries to press their foreheads together, but Wolffe only watches with furious eyes. “Wolffe, please.”

Another flash of pain as the knife comes out, and more blood, and then nothing at all. Wolffe watches the body drop to the ground in a heap and walks away, lip curled in contempt. 

2.

No sooner than Wolffe is awake does he start screaming. Dimly, he knows that Rex has scrambled into the room, is trying to pry his hands from his face and control his thrashing, but there’s no room for any of that. Not next to the vision of Plo gasping for breath, gurgling in his throat, drowning in his own blood, so confused at how this could be happening. And Plo, coming obediently to the slaughter at a word, so faithful to his Marshal that he couldn’t conceive of Wolffe being a threat to him even with the Force screaming at him. 

He sees the way Plo had fallen, curled on his side, blood soaking into the dirt under him, his irises a fine silver line under his eyewear, and he feels Plo’s tremors as the knife slid in, and the shock that he was dying, and his solid resolve that he would not harm his beloved, that Wolffe could take his life if that was what he wanted. And it’s only too easy to imagine Plo’s racing heartbeat pumping his blood out of the wound Wolffe had made, and how Plo hadn’t even tried to hold pressure, hadn’t tried to fight back, had only wanted to know why Wolffe had turned on him. 

And the night before, how angry Wolffe had been, how dismissive. Plo had only been doing his job, had only been himself. Wolffe wouldn’t have loved him if he were anyone else. And yet he’d been so harsh, as if Plo had been trying to spite him. As if in the long year since he’d become Marshal, Plo had ever been anything but loyal.

And Rex is shouting at him, but all he can hear is Plo gasping and his quiet moan, and forever that sound will be tainted by the blood falling from his mouth, and the thud of his body striking the ground where Wolffe had let him fall, like he was nothing. Like he meant nothing. And his quiet pleading, his begging, tinged with a new desperation, and that is the thought that crystallizes in Wolffe’s mind: that Plo had died thinking Wolffe was angry at him. That Plo had died clinging to him with shaking hands, asking for one last kiss, and been denied. That Plo had died knowing he was unloved. 

He howls, shoving Rex away from him, fighting off the medical droid and batting away the syringe of sedative. He has to get back to Cato Nemoidia. He has to go back, has to find Plo again, has to hold his beloved. He has to sing Plo to sleep and build up his pyre, stay with him until he’s free among the stars he had loved. Surely it hasn’t been so long that the scavengers would have come to desecrate his darling. He can’t have been left there to rot. He can still do this last thing for Plo, and wherever he’s marched he’ll know he was Wolffe’s most dear and his last moments were only a lie. He stares at Rex with wild eyes, scanning for exits. The clock behind him gives a date that cannot be true. 

“Wolffe,” says Rex sadly, following his line of sight, “it’s been years. He’s - gone.”

“No,” Wolffe says, “he can’t be. He can’t be. Because if he was - if I killed him -”

“It wasn’t you,” Rex insists.

“I called him to me. I took advantage of his trust. I put a knife in his heart and left him,” he snarls. Bile rises in his throat with the self-loathing. “You should have put a bolt in me. You never should have woken me up. _Why would you wake me up?”_

“Because Jedi General Plo Koon loved you,” Rex says. Wolffe moans at the sound of his name. _Plo, Plo, Plo,_ the only word in the galaxy he could hear repeated forever and never lose its meaning. Only that wasn’t true, was it? In the most crucial moments, he had thought it meant only _traitor_.

“He shouldn’t have,” Wolffe says bitterly. “Look what love got him. Dead and eaten by -” He can’t finish the sentence and sinks to the ground, digging his knees and his forehead into the cold steel. “You should have killed me, Plo. For both our sakes.”

He thinks if he could go back now, if there were anything he could change, it would have been to give him that kiss.


End file.
